


Requiem

by cafemusain



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-23 03:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafemusain/pseuds/cafemusain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The people of Saint-Michel mourn, in their way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Requiem

Margot Fourrier is a good woman. If you ask her neighbors and friends, they will attest: she has raised five healthy children and lost only two, she goes to church every Sunday morning and all the feast days, she says her prayers each night. She’s never been in trouble with the law, and she knows that revolution is best left to those who understand it. There isn’t a person in Saint-Michel who hasn’t been required to learn from the past.

Nights like this come sometimes. Anxious nights that allow for no sleep, streets and students restless. Women like Margot Fourrier shut their ears and rock their babies and shutter their windows and hearts. Women like Margot Fourrier cannot afford revolution. “It’s just like a thunderstorm,” she whispers as she gathers her children around her. She kisses their eyelids and smooths their brows.

In the early hours, when gunshots have woken them all, little Georges begs her to open the door. She bolts it with a heavy heart and pretends she hasn’t seen the broken young faces through the broken shutters. She’s heard them speak before, their leader in his golden glory and his friends around him. They were good boys—good men—who could have been great, but were not.

Shutters slowly come open. On any other morning, the day would begin and Saint-Michel would come to its own kind of life. Today there is less than usual to wake up for. Her husband growls about the mess. Laure goes to fetch water like she does every morning, and comes back crying. Margot looks at the washing, looks at the breakfast dishes. She ties her hair back like she does every day, and begins knocking on the neighbors’ doors.

These boys are not hers to mourn, but who else will? Mothers far away in the provinces, if they ever find out; students hearing names missed at role call. Their loss is a burden on her heart all the same, and she does her best to prepare them for their Lord with a dirty old handkerchief and hands accustomed to loss and lack. She would want the same done for any of her own.

Some of them are huddled together as if asleep. Some are alone. Margot has only ever lost children; she did not think these boys could ever be so heavy with death. They had always seemed to move like fire. The ones clearing away the debris have the easier task—it takes three of them to haul the leader from where he hangs out a window.

His flag becomes his shroud, and though she knows little of heroes, she thinks it is fitting as she kisses his eyelids and smooths his brow and sends him to rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah just please excuse the totally poop title and the fact that pretty much the whole thing is short enough to fit in the notes box and that it's really heavily movie-based I am done goodbye friends I am gone


End file.
